OPNAV NOTE 1650 was until recently the Navy's official reference for determining eligibility for medals and awards. It's primary relevance to this web site is as a source of identifying combat dates for USS Newport News CA-148.
Specifically, dates of eligibility for the Combat Action Ribbon (award code "CR") are counter battery dates. Precisely those same counter battery dates were identified from the Hostile Fire data
file (HOSTA) described elsewhere on this web site.

OPNAV NOTE 1650 was also a primary reference for veterans who are missing medals and awards. The same information is now available with online queries at the Navy Department Awards Web Service (NDAWS). Click the Unit Awards tab near the top to look for USS Newport News CA-148 awards under letter "N".

In October of 2002, shipmate Al Siegel posted a message to the main mailing list with information about requesting
missing medals. (That was back when we could still actually post a message to it without making anybody mad. --- Sorry, couldn't resist that.) Anyway, since some shipmates may have missed or subsequently misplaced
that message, I thought I'd post and supplement that info in this semi-permanent location.

SECNAVINST 1650 is a related reference that has a lot of detail rules on awarding and wearing medals and ribbons. I refer to it here largely because it contains the "campaign" dates for stars on the
Vietnam Service Medal. (It's not like I can make sense of it. I served in five of the campaigns listed there but my updated DD215 shows one silver star and two bronze stars. Go figure!) SECNAVINST 1650 is also
"the horse's mouth" for order of precedence (the sequence in which medals and ribbons are mounted) and many other rules. SECNAVINST 1650 can be found under Reference Items at the Navy Department Awards Web Service (NDAWS).

Posted below are relevant excerpts from those documents along with a link to the web site where the full official information can be found.